MentalSaftyNet

A place for me to blow off steam and for my readers to see things the way they are (at least in my little world). Feel free to leave a comment for others to see as well.
Please, no solicitations or political endorsements; they will not be accepted.
Send me a note at aimew@spymac.com
--- Veritas vos Liberabit! ---

Truth is where you find it. Unfortunately, the media figures that this story targets really don't care about their images nor anything but a myopic goal of ushering in an era of socialism here in America. They don't even seem to care that socialism has never worked anywhere it was tried. To quote Albert Einstein, "Insanity is doing the same things over again and expecting different results." The mainstream media in this country, maybe in all of the Western World, are completely insane.-----------------------------------------------------------Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?by Orson Scott CardOctober 20, 2008

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" (http://snipurl.com/457to): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Fred Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice -- you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension -- so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naiveté time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards' own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women (NOW) threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe -- and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.

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There is a virtuous fear which is the effect of faith, and a vicious fear which is the product of doubt and distrust. The former leads to hope as relying on God, in whom we believe; The latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe.Persons of the one character fear to lose God; those of the other character fear to find Him.--Pascal

“Democracies are most commonly corrupted by the insolence of demagogues.” —Aristotle

“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” —Augustine of Hippo

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius

That title may be a non sequitur but I think it makes the point clear. Worthless is what they are, there are no values of worthless other than being without worth. “What am I talking about?” you may well be asking yourself. OK, read this and see if you understand:

The mainstream media has no worth as a news agency when it is simply acting as the propaganda arm of the Obama/Biden campaign. There used to be a time when the media would be all over these gaffs by Biden and also would have known that Gov. Palin was right in her answers to her questions, used as examples. Biden’s ignorance of basic Constitutional tenants would have been all over the networks and newspapers, not just a lone story on the one news agency that makes an attempt at integrity.

We are living in very dangerous times and the MSM is exacerbating the danger. How dangerous? Watch the stock market the day after the election… McCain’s victory will start its recovery; Obama’s victory will precipitate the long awaited, final crash that will excuse the switch to socialism and the destruction of America’s financial leadership role in the world. (Why do you think so many people are selling off their portfolios now, before the market completely makes them worthless, if not in preparation for an Obama ‘victory’? I put that in quotes because a victory for Obama is a severe defeat for America. It will certainly mark the end of the country as we grew up knowing it. The US of A will more closely resemble a South American country than anything else; it’s heading there as it is but Obama will usher in the final transition. He’s already set to Nationalize all your pension funds… have you heard that? Oh yes he is.

Biden mentioned that corporate big-wig pensions will be the first to go; but right now, in Washington, there is a hearing on a method of completely Nationalizing 401k’s and rolling them into the Social security System. Oh, for sure they’ll sweeten the deal and make some people think it’s a good idea, giving you the August (2008) value of your 401k; but it will just be a little value added to your SS benefits and only 50% of it will be transferable to your heirs. (A way to apply the death tax to your pension.) Right now you have, at least the illusion that your money is yours, that is, the part of what you make that the government allows you to keep; but before much longer, if the democrats put their plans into action, you won’t even have that illusion. Are you so enamored with the Social Security Administration that you can’t wait to retire on what they will provide you with?

If all the money that was put into your SS account by just you over the course of your life was in a 401k, even with the resent market losses, you would have quite a nice nest-egg that would pay you better than a living wage throughout your retirement years; but there is actually twice that amount in your account, isn’t there, what with your employers’ contribution; yet your SS benefits will hardly be enough to live comfortably on, will it? I know because I get just about the maximum payout from SS along with about half that by way of a VA pension and I’m just getting by in today’s economy. Without that VA pension I’d be living in a slum tenement on tuna fish. The democrats in congress want them to handle all your retirement. You aren’t capable of taking care of yourself, in their elitist opinion.

What do you think he means when Obama said that industry should start from the bottom up? Think about that… “from the bottom up.” Did your company, the one you work for or own now, or any one in the past start out by hiring a bunch of people then sit around and decide what you were going to do to make money? …or did it start with an idea, risked money on it, worked until help was needed, and then hired people to handle the work that the owner couldn’t do by themselves? The latter is a ‘top down’ enterprise – that’s how all companies started. Obama thinks it should be the other way around. How do you think that will work? Will it work? Can it work?

Ten days to find out.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There is a virtuous fear which is the effect of faith, and a vicious fear which is the product of doubt and distrust. The former leads to hope as relying on God, in whom we believe; The latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe.Persons of the one character fear to lose God; those of the other character fear to find Him.--Pascal

“Democracies are most commonly corrupted by the insolence of demagogues.” —Aristotle

“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” —Augustine of Hippo

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius

Friday, October 10, 2008

Now that ACORN is coming under fire for their voter fraud activities in several states (and a possible RICO investigation), Obama is denying any association with that organization. You might remember, however, that ACORN is where he did his ‘community organizing’! Like his associations with the Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Richard Ayers, Bernadette Dohrn, Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and others, he is trying to hide his radical background. In fact, insofar as CAIR goes, he had a campaign staffer last year that left his campaign over his association with that group but he was replaced with another person connected with it, who is now coming under fire for that connection. CAIR, in case you don’t know, is on the Homeland Security watch list because of its connection to Hamas and Hizballah.

Who is Obama, anyway? The person he says he is in his book(s) is a radical who learned to fool people by being friendly, articulate, and soft spoken. (‘Fooling People’ is the phrase he used in his book, by the way, not something I am attributing to him.) Something is very odd about this guy, at the very least. Like when he was twenty years old, why did he go for a visit to Pakistan (from Malaysia)?

Remember my report on the issue of his birth? He is using a CAIR lawyer for that, too, rather than simply show the record number on his ‘live birth certificate” that is redacted on the copy shown on his website. Then the plaintiff could go to Hawaii and ask to see that record at the hospital where it was issued. He chooses to fight the suit instead. How suspicious does that seem? He doesn’t seem to care, though, and as long as the MSM is carrying his water, he can obfuscate all he wants to and the MSM will make his excuses for him.

The old saw for the time of the Third Reich goes something like, “The bigger the lie, the easier it is for more people to believe it.” Obama would seem to be the personification of that saying; nobody wants to believe that he is the dangerous radical that more and more evidence seems to say he is. He says so in his books (his version of Mien Kampf); he says so with the people he learned from growing up (one of which was a charter member of the American Communist Party); he does have some Muslim background, which normally wouldn’t be an issue, but why did he visit Pakistan when he was twenty and why would he deny it now? He uses CAIR lawyers (who would do that?), and has great mutual respect for Luis Farrakhan. Moammar Kaddafi talks highly of him, as does the Iranian President; and he seems to be drawing money (some of which was found out about and sent back) from Palestinian sources linked to Hamas. His friends and neighbors, with whom he also served on ‘charitable learning foundations’ (that seem to have lowered the standard of education in Chicago) were members of the Weather Underground who addmiitedly bombed Congress, the Pentagon, police stations and other government facilities; only to get away with it due to legal technicalities. Now, of course, Obama denies knowing them. He has denied so much of his background and the people in it that we must believe he lived for over thirty years in a vacuum, with no friends, no associates, did nothing with anyone, worked alone as a community organizer (how does that work?) – he’s just a blank piece of paper, just like his resume. In the difficult times ahead for the country, how can we even be thinking about letting someone who has done nothing, with nobody, and did it no where, get into the White House where experience and decision making is a major part of the job?

The current market crash is likely in response to the polls that say Obama is likely to be the next President, too. With the financial crisis facing us and the collapse of industry due to lack of money and credit, what will he do? That must be what Wall street is asking itself as investors are desperately trying to sell everything they have. Will he Nationalize the nation and bring Socialism to America for keeps to fill the void left by the collapse of Capitalism? If you think that’s good or even funny, think about whatever retirement portfolio you have and what it will be worth when/if that happens – zero! Some people want to turn to the government in times of financial uncertainty; but the government is what has caused this financial uncertainty to begin with, especially the liberal policies from the New Deal, to the Great Society, to the Community Reinvestment Act, we are coming closer and closer to Socialism and the collapse of industry here and around the world.

Global Warming has its role to play in all this too; we all heard Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives tell us that she would stand in the way of oil development in this country in order to “save the world.” Do you think these democrats in Congress will be disappointed if industry fails? Hell no! That would be the end of pollution; and that means more to them than your lives, your jobs and you futures! That’s who they are; that’s what they’ve said in hundreds of ways, culminating with MS Pelosi spelling it right out for us. She would sell us all out in order to Save the World… The world doesn’t need saving except from the likes of Nancy Pelosi and the rest of these liberals with their heads up their asses, thinking it’s in the sky!

I heard today where some financial experts are saying that if Obama gets into the White House, the Auto industry in this country, maybe around the world, will be the first of all the major industries to collapse and them by next year! Expect all coal-fired electrical generation plants to be shut down quickly, too. The House democrats, again lead by Nancy Pelosi, have already blocked the construction of new coal fired electrical power plants; it’s just one short step to close the ones that are already running. What then? How will industry run without electricity? Coal produces the vast majority of electricity now; but burning coal puts CO2 into the atmosphere! How long will we even be able to get gasoline, at any price, once industry is shut down? It won’t matter because you won’t need to commute anyway, there’ll be no jobs at all by then.

So what will the future hold? If Obama wins, there won’t be a future as we know it. If he loses we might have a chance. Nothing is yet too far gone that it can’t be rectified; but it’ll take a lot of changes to the way the government runs. All these cancerous programs and liberal policies will have to end or be restructured so they can work in a way so they will not be totally dependant on taxes, that’s for sure. They are all sagging under the weight of the Baby Boomer generation retiring anyway. Something has to give, folks; and only a determined and focused electorate can do it.

Things always look darkest before the storm. We have 24 days left to save the country. I will finish as much as I can with the blog I am getting ready that names culpable names and explains how this housing bubble came to be and came to burst, causing this financial crisis the country is in. I don’t know how it relates to the financial crisis happening in Europe and Asia, yet; but I will include that too, if I can. It is getting close but some things are harder to dig out than others. From what I’ve been able to uncover, so far, Obama and his associates are deep in the thick of it. Don’t let the democrats fool you into thinking they are fixing anything – they are who are culpable. As I’ve been saying, with all the digging I’ve done I have yet to find a republican name attached to any of it – the democrats wanted all the money and all the glory; but what they earned is all the blame in a multi-trillion dollar scandal/swindle that may well mark the end of the country.

We have to stop Obama’s run to the White House; he is the biggest disaster the democrats have ever perpetrated on us to date. Compared to Obama, Kerry would have been desirable (and he’s a full-fledged traitor); but I don’t think he was capable of destroying the country – Obama has us nearly there now!

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There is a virtuous fear which is the effect of faith, and a vicious fear which is the product of doubt and distrust. The former leads to hope as relying on God, in whom we believe; The latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe.Persons of the one character fear to lose God; those of the other character fear to find Him.--Pascal

“Democracies are most commonly corrupted by the insolence of demagogues.” —Aristotle

“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” —Augustine of Hippo

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The emphasis in the story below are mine, including the disclaimer about the author’s relationship to John McCain. Not withstanding that, the fact speak for themselves and the money received by the democrat players is common knowledge now. What I have yet to see is a list of republicans who have received money from Freddie and Fannie during the same time frame as when Obama, Clinton, and Dodd got theirs.

The democrats are again starting to squawk about the plan put forth by the President. I’ll take a moment of your time here to explain a thing or two about that. First and foremost, only Congress can spend money. The President can ask for money and propose ways to spend money but he cannot, himself, appropriate a dime without Congress’s approval.

Secondly, having over seven years experience dealing with congress, the President surely knows that anything he proposes will get modifies during that proposal’s trip through both houses of Congress. It is better to ask for way more than he want, or realistically expects to get, so that in the end, when Congress is done modifying it, he has a good chance of getting what he reasonably hopes to get out of it. That is, if he started with a reasonable request, it would get trimmed and changed so much that, in the end, he’d wind up with nothing of what he wanted. The only way to get what is needed is to start by demanding a great deal more. (It would be different if the President were a democrat, of course.)

Another thing is that the democrats have done so much to create this mess (see below and other emails by yours truly) that he’d be truly incompetent to suggest that they, and by extension all of Congress, have any say over what happens with the bailout process. The courts, too, have been so complacent in dealing with democrat’s policies that they can be seen, easily be seen as just and extension of the DNC; and so to get them involved would be akin to involving the democrats. It is a terrible situation, however one looks at it and it would be better if a committee answerable to the President along would be better than just one person; but that would lead to the democrat’s majority in Congress finally controlling who sat on such a committee as well. What is he reasonably to do? At least the Secretary of the Treasury is answerable to the President and the President tried to restrict Fannie and Freddie back in 2003, the democrats made the mess and resisted all attempts to avoid it, so how can anyone seriously not understand why he’s trying to wrest any control over the bailout from the democrats? He may not be able to do it but he’s at least making the attempt.

That the democrats desire to profit from the bailout is axiomatic, too. That’s what they do and have done forever. It was the democrats that changed Washington time and again so that their would be huge amounts of money to plunder; and they their friends have never restrained themselves from plundering it, either. Note how the top one hundred, top level managers have taken over a billion dollars in ‘bonus money’ for the hard work they did plundering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac… bonuses… can you imagine that? Can you imagine that they are getting away with it; and that it is still going on as the institutions crumble around us all, they are collecting over a billion dollars in bonuses (collectively).

They should be paying back every cent they have in the world, followed by about twenty years, each, in Federal Prisons. The real prisons, too, not the country clubs with restricted access; but in with the kidnapers, murderers, and other bank robbers. Just because they committed their crimes with a pen, rather that a gun, doesn’t make those crimes any less heinous… but they are collecting bonuses instead. I can’t speak for anybody else but that makes me mad enough to spit. (It makes me a lot madder than that but one needs to be discreet when putting words to paper (so to speak).) What can I actually do, though, besides just talking about it? What can any one person do?

Maybe it’s time to start a private militia? That is the purpose of the Second Amendment, after all is said and done. It’s for words alone are not enough but something has to be done and the government is the problem. That’s what the author of the Second Amendment said it was for. It has nothing at all to do with hunting; it is to ensure that the rest of the Constitution is adhered to by the government, is what it is all about, what it has always been about. That’s why the democrats are always trying to eliminate it, too.

They are so good at fooling people though, so damned good at that. The press is on their side, too, making the job of fooling people so damned easy. I used to wonder why, what was in it for the press but then it became clear enough. The press, print and broadcast, is owned by very few people and by and large they are democrats, too. The owners, the people you almost never hear the names of, get to wet their beaks in the public trough, too. Like so many democrat operatives, like Jamie Gorelick, who made over $26 million out of Fannie Mae. From Wikipedia on her:

Federal National Mortgage Association Even though she had no previous training nor experience in finance, Gorelick was appointed Vice Chairman of Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) from 1997 to 2003. She served alongside former Clinton Administration official Franklin Raines, and earned over $26,000,000 during her six years there. During that period, Fannie Mae developed a $10 billion accounting scandal. On March 25, 2002, Business Week interviewed Gorelick about the health of Fannie Mae. Gorelick is quoted as saying, “We believe we are managed safely. We are very pleased that Moody’s gave us an A-minus in the area of bank financial strength -- without a reference to the government in any way. Fannie Mae is among the handful of top-quality institutions.” One year later, Government Regulators “accused Fannie Mae of improper accounting to the tune of $9 billion in unrecorded losses”. In an additional scandal concerning falsified financial transactions that helped the company meet earnings targets for 1998, a “manipulation” that triggered multimillion-dollar bonuses for top executives. Gorelick received $779,625.

She served Clinton well, covering his (and her) ass as a member of the 9/11 Commission, whereas she should have been being investigated by said commission. They all get paid well out of public money; and so it goes with the owners of the MSM. The people get fooled and pay the tab, too; what a sweet deal for those in control of it. Which is why they now are screaming about Bush’s plan that excludes them from any control – it’s hard to know what they worry about the most, getting caught or losing their access to the feeding trough.

This isn’t the end – but I’m just to angry now to say any more. Ideas on what to do are welcome; we need a plan of action that will work.

Following is a tale by Kevin Hassett, written on Bloomberg.com, highlights and emphasis are my contribution – no words have been changed. Here, too, is the URL where you can find it for yourself:

This is the end of my words and the bebining of Kevin Hassett's... ---

How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis

Commentary by Kevin Hassett

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The financial crisis of the past year has provided a number of surprising twists and turns, and from Bear Stearns Cos. to American International Group Inc., ambiguity has been a big part of the story.

Why did Bear Stearns fail, and how does that relate to AIG? It all seems so complex.

But really, it isn’t. Enough cards on this table have been turned over that the story is now clear. The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.

Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street’s efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.

In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn’t make the market, they became the market. Over the years, it added up to an enormous obligation. As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. Their large presence created an environment within which even mortgage-backed securities assembled by others could find a ready home.

The problem was that the trillions of dollars in play were only low-risk investments if real estate prices continued to rise. Once they began to fall, the entire house of cards came down with them.

Turning Point

Take away Fannie and Freddie, or regulate them more wisely, and it’s hard to imagine how these highly liquid markets would ever have emerged. This whole mess would never have happened.

It is easy to identify the historical turning point that marked the beginning of the end.

Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were, after years of dominating Washington, on the ropes. They were enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. At one telling moment in late 2004, captured in an article by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Peter Wallison, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s chief accountant told disgraced Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines that Fannie’s position on the relevant accounting issue was not even “on the page” of allowable interpretations.

Then legislative momentum emerged for an attempt to create a “world-class regulator” that would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks. Politicians who previously had associated themselves proudly with the two accounting miscreants were less eager to be associated with them. The time was ripe.

Greenspan’s Warning

The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn’t be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie “continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,” he said. “We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.”

What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

Different World

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. Wallison wrote at the time: “It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.”

Mounds of Materials

Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.

But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.

Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.

There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.

Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that’s worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He is an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

There is a virtuous fear which is the effect of faith, and a vicious fear which is the product of doubt and distrust. The former leads to hope as relying on God, in whom we believe; The latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe.Persons of the one character fear to lose God; those of the other character fear to find Him.--Pascal

“Democracies are most commonly corrupted by the insolence of demagogues.” —Aristotle

“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” —Augustine of Hippo

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius

Monday, September 22, 2008

I’m just tired of hearing that both sides do the same thing; if you think that’s how it is, send me examples- real ones, not some talking sock-puppet from Moveon.org, or some such. Real events with a real republican behind it. You might find a few; but I’ll find ten democrats for every republican you find!

One side is not as bad as the other. I started seeing the light when I started looking for when the republicans earned the title of bigot; and all I found was democrat bigotry at every turn, from before the Civil War, during it, and after it, right through the fifties. Then, when they had no choice, they voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1967 but with just 60% support – the republicans showed 80% support on that vote. Then, having been forced to ‘do the right thing’ they made up for it with the “Great society” that has systematically destroyed the Black family and the Black community with Affirmative Action and Political Correctness.

Both parties are not the same; the republicans aren’t even as ‘in-step’ with their party as the democrats are. Democrats define patriotism as being strong enough to commit treason by help America’s enemies to kill our troops; and they’d rewrite the Constitution as it suits them, and a plethora of actions like those. In case you are confused, that is not patriotism, it is treason in some cases but it is not patriotism. What we are sorely lacking for are leaders, from either party, that will start to investigate and prosecute these people. It would go a long way towards cleaning up our political system if we started holding our Representatives and Senators responsible and put those that have earned it, in jail. That is, put them in a real jail, with the other criminals, not some gated country club; and relieve them of their ill-gotten gains. They should be held to a higher standard since they took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Putting the bastards in prison and impoverishing them would make that oath mean something, too!

We need a new Political Party, that’s for certain. One that will hold all of these leaches accountable. The Civil Service needs a good looking into as well. Too many of them have grown too powerful and abuse their power. They may be the glue that holds government together but they are the ones that hold these scandals and scams together, as well.

The Primaries are over; so, come November 4th, we need to remove all of the democrats. Then, in the next primaries, change all the republicans, too. (Democrats should be kept as far from Washington as possible and for as long as possible, at least until the rotten ones die; and then any new ones will start fresh, without being taught how to cheat and steal.) We need to keep doing that until there are no politicians in Washington who have been there for more than a few years. Then we need to support a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on Congress, both houses. (If we could repeal the 17th Amendment, we wouldn’t have to worry about that with the Senate – they would change with new governors.

Even then there will be ‘mentors’ who will teach the young ones; so, investigations need to be kept going, so those ‘mentors’ can be rooted out and imprisoned (and impoverished) too. I’m afraid it’s going to take too long and we, as a Nation, don’t have the attention span for the long-haul. Hell, we can’t even keep our eyes on the ball in the war on terror; and we’re starting to say it’s taking too long!

With what’s happened the past few weeks and days, and what is coming as a result, I am truly afraid that nothing will be done, nobody will be held accountable, and the doors will be left wide open, like they were after the Savings & Loan debacle for a new batch of thieves to raid the Nation’s Treasury. The taxpayers will be robbed again and again because nobody is doing anything to stop it. What can we do about it? What will we do about it?

One thing that we all need to do is try and figure out short-term investing. (Not long term, that’ll all get eaten up as these bail-outs progress.) We need to find ways to accumulate a lot of money against the coming depression and the rampant inflation that will come with it. We are going to need wheel-barrows full of money just to buy groceries.

Who knows, this could be a planned path to bring us around to a one-world government, first by consolidating all financial institutions. After that the rest becomes easy. Then, the Eugenicists fulfill their desires and remove 80% of the world’s population, with the other 19% working to keep the elite 1% in luxury. That might be far-fetched, of course; unless we see the other parts of that plan in play, like this Global Warming scam. One main thrust of that scam is the depopulation of Africa. Keeping DDT away from them as well as technology, insures plagues; converting choice agricultural land from food to bio-fuel production maintains the ongoing famines and wars, including those of genocide. Is it a crazy conspiracy theory when it’s actually working?

I call Global Warming a scam because that’s what the science says it is. The IPCC was a sham, with lass than a handful of scientists actually signing off on the greenhouse gas theories. The models don’t work and are so wrong that the entire theory based on them must be artificially maintained. The past few years have seen startling cooling; so much so that all the warming that happened in the twentieth century has gone away. The atmospheric layers that should be warming if there was a greenhouse effect taking place are not warming at all, nor have they ever (during the past hundred years, anyway).

Glaciers that are melting now have only been in place for a couple of hundred years, since the Maunder Minimum, anyway. As to wildlife being threatened, polar bears have survived the much warmer climate the Earth had a thousand years ago, when the Vikings had colonies on Greenland; and they should survive whatever change is happening now. The point is that Human Beings are not destroying the planet, nor could we if we set our minds to do so. The Earth has survived great extinction events in the past and will survive us, a species that came about quite naturally, according to those who think we’re destroying it, anyway. Whatever we do is natural to us, it is in our natures to manipulate the environment so to do differently would be unnatural. I certainly do not wish to behave unnaturally; so I’ll continue to manipulate my environment and encourage others to do so, too. Damn the democrats for wanting us to behave unnaturally!

This is going to be a long, cold winter with rising fuel prices, thanks to the democrats who want it that way. Learn to day trade well enough to pile up some large stash of cash; we are all going to need one (or two or more)!

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There is a virtuous fear which is the effect of faith, and a vicious fear which is the product of doubt and distrust. The former leads to hope as relying on God, in whom we believe; The latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe.Persons of the one character fear to lose God; those of the other character fear to find Him.--Pascal

“Democracies are most commonly corrupted by the insolence of demagogues.” —Aristotle

“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” —Augustine of Hippo

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Algore is getting desperate. Why else would he disperse hundreds of millions of dollars on a marketing campaign for a ‘scientific theory that was decided years ago’?

I have been perusing a website that is indisputably biased towards displaying AGW (Anthropomorphic Global Warming) as a hoax; and those who cling to it, as charlatans. If anything, they are heralding the next Ice Age; but I think there’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek along with that declaration.

Feel free to start where you’d like and if you find something worth pointing to that I have not yet, send me the link where you found it and I’ll take a look.

I am still on the section about Greenland’s glaciers expanding; and it is apparent why they built the website. There seems to be as many (or more) glaciers in the world that are expanding as thee are those that are disappearing. They point out articles that grudgingly admit to that, then go on to say the expansion is due to Global Warming. No matter what the news, stories end saying it is due to Global Warming. Places warming – Global Warming; Places cooling – Global Warming; ice thickening – Global Warming; ice thinning, Global Warming; everything is Global Warming in many news articles. It’s just pathetic, really. Worse still are the articles that seem to have just disappeared. Oh, the links go to pages at the news site mentioned, but there is no story displayed, nor is there an error message and the page is marked (on the browser) as being what it was pointed at. Very strange…

Anyway, like I said, I’m still at the part about Greenland’s glacier(s) thickening and spreading. It would seem that all the excitement about the rise in sea levels is extremely exaggerated and premature at least. In fact, if the current trend continues, more of the Earth’s water is going to be trapped in Greenland causing the sea level to recede a tad. How disappointed Algore must be about that; no disasters to point to, so he has to rely on silly people becoming more alarmed.

Having no real events to alarm people with, news stories that I’ve seen (from this site or on my Google News page, where I built a section dedicated to Climate Change news) are suggestive, with phrases like ‘if such and such happens, then this’ll happen’ or ‘something could be caused by , leading to accelerating ’ but no facts at all. Like a story about a glacier growing in the caldera of Mt. St. Helen’s. The story goes on to say, “… which may be the only glacier in North America, or possibly the World, to be growing. …” Yet there are a dozen or so within five hundred miles that are, indeed, growing! The authors of these stories are dedicated to maintaining the myth of Global Warming, just as the same group were dedicated to the theme of us losing the war in Iraq but haven’t written a story in the past year about the war, just to maintain people’s opinion that it’s a lost cause.

Nevertheless, Congress, like a growing glacier, has picked up the cry (now, when the evidence is pilling up opposing it) about climate change and it is starting to cost you money. So far the rises have been somewhat subtle, like from using ethanol in gasoline. Actually ‘subtle’ may be the wrong word as it’s only subtle insofar as to the reason for it because there’s nothing subtle about the effects. Food prices are soaring and people around the world are starving. As mentioned (by me) before, croplands in Africa have been diverted from food to ethanol production, despite the surrounding famine. I only use the word ‘subtle’ because, so far, there has been no direct carbon tax, like what Algore is calling for. (See cartoon, below) The one thing we can count on with Congress, is to be a day late and spend lots of your dollars on the completely wrong things, creating the most possible negative consequences.

I took a peek at the section on Antarctica. Being the largest reservoir of ice in the world I thought it would make this note more complete and accurate. Depending on how you look at the expression “Most of the world’s glaciers” I may have been quite inaccurate above when I said, “There seems to be as many (or more) glaciers in the world that are expanding as thee are those that are disappearing.” It may have been more accurate to have said that 90-95% of the world’s glaciers are expanding, especially if we look at total volume, not just as a matter of named glaciers. Antarctica is about twice the area of the United States and all of its glaciers, except perhaps those on the Antarctic Peninsula, are building at an almost alarming rate, about 5’ of depth a year. Many of the scientific stations there have had to have been rebuilt a half dozen times over the past twenty years as the snow and ice have risen to engulf the previous ones.

From the article: "The best we can say right now is that the climate models are somewhat inconsistent with the evidence that we have for the last 50 years from continental Antarctica," he stated, adding that "We're looking for a small signal that represents the impact of human activity and it is hard to find it at the moment."

I would think it would be hard to find, as it doesn’t exist! The world is far too large for us puny humans to have any impact on its dynamic systems. Maybe, and that’s a big maybe, and if the Earth’s climate system was static we might be able to have an effect; but it’s not static, it’s dynamic, consisting of many feedback systems built-in to counteract intermittent effects, like volcanoes (which have far more impact, individually, than all the activities of mankind put together). The puny amounts of CO2 that we add to the atmosphere is simply god for plant life and nothing else. Even with what we add there is barely a few hundred parts per million molecules of the stuff in the air, far too little for it to influence a greenhouse effect. Far and away any greenhouse effect in the atmosphere comes from water vapor and perhaps to a much lesser extent, methane. That comes mostly comes from flatulence and that must surely be diminishing along with diminishing herds of huge animals. Now cows make most of that and we’re doing our part by eating them. CO2 is insignificant; all the talk about is has more effect than it has on the weather.

Not only are we not having an impact on the Earth’s climate, we couldn’t if we tried. It would be far easier to affect local weather than global weather and we cannot even do that. We can’t even predict what the weather is going to be next week and Algore, et al, would have us believe they can predict what it’s going to be like a hundred years from now. Their models are consistently wrong yet they cling to them and continue to sell them to gullible politicians who are afraid of their own shadows.

Enough for today. It’s too much to hope that it’s enough forever, though. As long as Algore and his minions are trying (and succeeding) to influence Congress (and the courts), we’ll all have to continue to fight back less they win and we all have to pay far more than we can afford to. Ultimately, if you see through all the hype, the goal of these people is to bring the world’s economy back to eighteenth century levels, where fossil fuels are left in the ground and transportation will be as far as horses will carry us.

The bright side of that lifestyle is that it’ll have less of a shock when women have to also start wearing burqas and need to follow alongside a man in public. That is, like life in Afghanistan eight years ago. Ready for that?

In closing let me mention a book that I’m reading on the subject called “Climate Confusion – How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians, and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor” by Roy W. Spencer, PhD. His PhD is in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin in 1981 and is the Principle Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where he directs a variety of climate research projects. (He knows what he’s talking about and writes in a self-depreciating sort of way, adding some humor into a grim subject matter – the Man-made Global Warming scam. For example, from the last paragraph of the Prologue: “Critics of this book will say that my treatment of global warming is obviously biased. And they are right. I have studied the issues enough to have developed some very strong biases on the subject. But it is not a question of whether or not bias exists – for we are all biased. It is a question of which bias is the best bias to be biased with.” After that there is a great deal of common sense, very little pandering, and a great deal of reason with facts enough to support what he says. I am just getting started today; but it is not a long read, under 200 pages in all. If you get a chance to get it, do; it’ll make for a good afternoon at the beach reading.

Cheers…

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There is a virtuous fear which is the effect of faith, and a vicious fear which is the product of doubt and distrust. The former leads to hope as relying on God, in whom we believe; The latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe.Persons of the one character fear to lose God; those of the other character fear to find Him.--Pascal

“Democracies are most commonly corrupted by the insolence of demagogues.” —Aristotle

“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” —Augustine of Hippo

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

You know, it isn’t their intentions so much as their corruption that makes me fear and suspect almost all liberal ideas from Congress. Although their intension's invariably lead to disastrous and unintended consequences, their corruption makes even their good intension's suspect! (Could it even be that those consequences are not unintended?)

Although there are many corrupt republicans, too, at least their platform is about individual rights and smaller government, not about identity groups’ privileges. The best government, as far as I understand the concept, is the smallest government possible needed to assure the common defense, monitor interstate commerce, and enforce equal rights for all individuals regardless of race, ethnicity, color, creed, or religion. It was when the government grew beyond those ideals that the corruption grew out of that excess. (As an aside here, I find the freedom of religion as a common theme throughout the founding documents but nowhere do I find the right of no religion; that has just been assumed.)

Beyond demanding that the States grant the freedoms inherent in the Constitution, the Federal government should have nothing to do with the people, per se – the people are within the domain of the state in which they live. The Sixteenth, and to a large extent the Seventeenth, amendments to the Constitution perverted that fundamental principle of Federalism; they involved the Federal government into the lives of the people of the country beyond insuring our liberties. In fact those amendments began the removal of our liberties, all in the name of good intentions.

If the Federal government were to distance themselves from the people (and their industry) the corruption would evaporate. It is as simple as that; at least for the most part. It is the money raised via the Sixteenth Amendment from which corruption springs forth. Money is power, power corrupts, absolute money corrupts absolutely. That follows like, if a=b and if b=c then c=a; I call it identity politics. The government has too much money to be uncorrupted, plain and simple.

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There is a virtuous fear which is the effect of faith, and a vicious fear which is the product of doubt and distrust. The former leads to hope as relying on God, in whom we believe; The latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe.Persons of the one character fear to lose God; those of the other character fear to find Him.--Pascal

“Democracies are most commonly corrupted by the insolence of demagogues.” —Aristotle

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius

“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” —Augustine of Hippo

Thursday, February 28, 2008

I have written much on the topic of Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW) to denounce it as a hoax, at best; as a swindle, more likely; and also as a cover for a nascent eugenics war based on the genocide of African and other Third-World populations, being waged by, or at least with the willing cooperation of, the UN.

Recently much of what I have said on the topic has been verified by current events and also by the scientific community. In particular, that the sun is the primary contributor to our climate, in many ways, not simply by providing all the energy the Earth receives. (Arguably, nuclear energy does not come from the sun but that has never been viewed as a contributor to climate or weather; so for all intents and purposes, I will leave nuclear energy out of the discussion for the sake of clarity and simplification.) To me the fact that Mars and other places in the Solar System are also warming left no doubt as to the sun being the dominant factor in climate and climate changes.

Since the AGW proponents have come forward, none of their predictions have born fruit; that is a sure sign that a theory is in error. It would seem, in fact, that they continually forecast the opposite of what has been happening. (This is above and beyond ice storms following Algore wherever he went to speak about the dangers of Global warming. That was just an amusing side note.) There are some examples of this in the following stories gathered from the internet this February, 2008. Please follow the links to the stories them selves to follow their references…

World Temperatures according to the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction. Note the steep drop over the last year. Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming.

There was an outrage, albeit a quiet one, from within the scientific community over the UN’s report on Climate Change. Names were used over the objections of the people who’s names were attached to the report; the UN refused to remove other names from the report after those people requested they be removed from it; other names on the report were not the scientists the report intimated they were, but rather just names of UN workers including janitors and maintenance workers. (Honorable enough professions but not experts on climate nevertheless.) Angry scientists focused on the issue.

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has turned into hard data out of that scientific community. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad saw its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The story (behind that story) about solar activity driving our climate: http://tinyurl.com/239mgn (It starts out a bit chilling - pun intended):--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blog: ScienceSolar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict Another Ice AgeMichael Asher (Blog) - February 9, 2008 11:53 AMA typical sunspot compared to the size of the earth. Sunspots have all but vanished in recent years.

Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago -- and it signaled a solar event known as a "Maunder Minimum," along with the start of what we now call the "Little Ice Age."

Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, says it may be happening again. Overseeing a giant radio telescope he calls a "stethoscope for the sun," Tapping says, if the pattern doesn't change quickly, the earth is in for some very chilly weather.

During the Little Ice Age, global temperatures dropped sharply. New York Harbor froze hard enough to allow people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island, and in Britain, people reported sighting eskimos paddling canoes off the coast. Glaciers in Norway grew up to 100 meters a year, destroying farms and villages.

But will it happen again?

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov predicted the sun would soon peak, triggering a rapid decline in world temperatures. Only last month, the view was echoed by Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. who advised the world to "stock up on fur coats." Sorokhtin, who calls man's contribution to climate change "a drop in the bucket," predicts the solar minimum to occur by the year 2040, with icy weather lasting till 2100 or beyond.

Observational data seems to support the claims -- or doesn't contradict it, at least. According to data from Britain's Met Office, the earth has cooled very slightly since 1998. The Met Office says global warming "will pick up again shortly." Others aren't so sure.

Researcher Dr. Timothy Patterson, director of the Geoscience Center at Carleton University, shares the concern. Patterson is finding "excellent correlations" between solar fluctuations, a relationship that historically, he says doesn't exist between CO2 and past climate changes. According to Patterson. we shouldn't be surprised by a solar link. "The sun [is] the ultimate source of energy on this planet," he says.

Such research dates back to 1991, when the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study showing that world temperatures over the past several centuries correlated very closely with solar cycles. A 2004 study by the Max Planck Institute found a similar correlation, but concluded the timing was only coincidental, as the solar variance seemed too small to explain temperature changes.

However, researchers at DMI continued to work, eventually discovering what they believe to be the link. The key factor isn't changes in solar output, but rather changes in the sun's magnetosphere A stronger field shields the earth more from cosmic rays, which act as "seeds" for cloud formation. The result is less cloud cover, and a warming planet. When the field weakens, clouds increases, reflecting more light back to space, and the earth cools off.

Recently, lead researcher Henrik Svensmark was able to experimentally verify the link between cosmic rays and cloud formation, in a cloud chamber experiment called "SKY" at the Danish National Space Center. CERN plans a similar experiment this year.

Even NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies -- long the nation's most ardent champion of anthropogenic global warming -- is getting in on the act. Drew Shindell, a researcher at GISS, says there are some "interesting relationships we don't fully understand" between solar activity and climate.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------And: http://tinyurl.com/28kkfa--------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Sun Also SetsINVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILYPosted 2/7/2008Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.

Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.

Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.

Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better equipment.

In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.

As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.

For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."

Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."

Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."

"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.

A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.

"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."

The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance.

Click here for copyright permissions!Copyright 2000-2008 Investor's Business Daily, Inc.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[We might want to build a few more coal fired electrical plants, perhaps in Africa?]The temperature chart used in all the above quoted articles by itself is at:http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/7390_large_hadcrut.jpg and here:

Note that the past year shows the single sharpest downward spike ever! Never has a .6°C annual temperature change been seen; and this one is negative (cooling), not warming! Note that they are stating that the sun is responsible for it. What has your humble author been telling you all these years about that? You doubt my humility, perhaps; but I doubt the need for humility here so it balances out. Read the last three paragraphs in the above story a couple of times and you might start agreeing with me about that, too.

Here’s how the sun’s influence impacts our climate and an experiment that verifies it: http://tinyurl.com/ywlhkb The entire galaxy seems to be involved – talk about influences not intuitively included in much research!

The first question always was, “Is the Earth’s climate going through a long-term change?” Followed by the second question (if the answer to the first one was yes), “Is it caused by the industry of mankind?”

Well, as of this year at least, the answer to the first question seems to be no, there is no long-term global weather/climate change; so there is no second question. That is, there is a new second question, “Should Algore, et al, be tarred and feathered along with the Nobel Committee and ridden off the planet on a rail?” That answer to that one is an unequivocal, “YES! They should be shot into the sun to get them some real warming.”

On a sobering note, monitoring world-wide temperature is very tricky. Having monitoring stations in cities artificially shows warmer temperatures, for example, so if the majority of them are in population centers we’d get false readings – and many are so situated. Therefore this negative spike might actually be worse (or lower) that it shows, just as the warmth recorded in the past couple of decades might be overstated.

What I think should be done is to install a world-wide network of simple weather stations positioned at the intersection of parallels and meridians set 10° latitude/longitude apart, making for 1296 stations linked to a central (or a couple of central) data centers to maintain a continuous global temperature record. Half would be in winter, half in summer, half in day, and half in night, making for a pure global average.

Wind, cloud cover, barometric pressure, and rainfall would complete the averages and provide a great deal of global averages and might be extremely helpful in understanding what drives climate, at least insofar as surface conditions effect it. Still it would be far less than perfect. What would be needed for a complete picture would be if those stations could have a weather balloon tethered, reaching to 100,000 ft with weather stations every thousand feet on the way up. (That’s not at all plausible but would be idyllic.)

The sad facts are that we, as a collective intelligence, have no idea what global averages are, ever, and short of such a system we most likely never will.

Maybe we should send all this to our Congressmen? It might do some good… Who knows? One benefit I’d personally like to see is Algore going back into obscurity, where he belongs. Perhaps he could invent something else new, like rainbows or automobiles…

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There is a virtuous fear which is the effect of faith, and a vicious fear which is the product of doubt and distrust. The former leads to hope as relying on God, in whom we believe; The latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe.Persons of the one character fear to lose God; those of the other character fear to find Him.--Pascal

“Democracies are most commonly corrupted by the insolence of demagogues.” —Aristotle

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius